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"When you come to a fork in the road, take it." - Yogi Berra
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“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” – Aristotle
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Moving Toward and AwayAll right I have a confession. I usually enable people in the relationships in my life because I go for fun. You've heard me, if you've listened to any of these videos, talk about fun a lot. But, perhaps I go a bit too far with that. Just this morning, I learned a lesson about it. ______________________________________________ I was picturing my next week. Monday I will be with the Youth Transformed for Life kids. I always get them too wild. The teachers have to come in and say, "Oh yeah, he had fun - they had fun - but now they're a little too wild. The week after next, I'll be at the Rainbow Community School, where I usually get them a little too wild. It's because I go for the fun first, and then the kids get a little bit too out of control. And then, I have to establish structure afterward. So, I was reflecting on this tendency this morning, getting ready for those classes. And I realized that part of me did not want to think about it. I was trying to move away from the whole problem of enabling with too much fun up front, then regaining structure and discipline when it is a little too late. And then I remembered Dr. Lisa Miller and her book, The Awakened Brain (2021). In it she says that there are two modes in which you live your life, achieving mode and awakened mode. Your achieving mode might tend to look at problems as something to get around. But awakened mode might look at those same problems as lessons. In awakened mode, you might look at a problem as presenting an existential question - a chance to change your existence - make a learning experience from something that is a little bit annoying to you. So, I want to read to you from her paragraph on integrating those two modes in what she calls "quest awareness" or "quest orientation", which makes your life a journey. Listen to this. "Quest orientation is characterized by a tendency to journey in life: to search for answers to meaningful personal decisions and big existential questions; to perceive doubt as positive; and to be open to change, or more accurately, open to perceiving with fresh eyes, and then using new experience to fuel change. In quest, we open ourselves to the messages from life, take seriously this discovery, and then actively use learning to shape our decisions and actions—our personal operating manual" (Miller, 2021, p. 169). So, I got to thinking about this. You're born to this life and at first, you think everything is good. You don't move away from things. That's why you can take candy from a baby. If a stranger walks up, the baby looks up and thinks everything is going to be great. Then life happens and you go to the school of hard knocks. So, bad things start to happen to you, and you start to fall. But, the game of life is getting back - recovering your childhood - the ability to see things as wonderful again. But how? They're not wonderful. Well ... in total freedom ... you can have the choice to make life a quest - make life a journey! You can decide for yourself to look at the school of hard knocks and take the hard knocks - use them - learn from them - and say, "Thank you! Why did that just happen to me? Why am I like that? Why is this bad thing surrounding me? And what can do about it - what can I do with it? It must be that there is a lesson for life in here, somewhere!" - Read more |
Is there Advice for Depression?
"Schooling stuffs the brains of our children with trivia. The more trivia, the more their anxieties. They indoctrinate the children to believe that the consequences are grave when they fail to distinguish "good" from "evil", and agreement from disagreement. What gross nonsense!" (Laozi, Tao Te Ching, Verse 20, circa 500 BC) "Look at the same student and see no remarkable attributes one time – and striking qualities by looking once again." - The Teacher's Bill of Rights “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” - Marcus Aurelius (Meditations) - Read more
This is the novel that was awarded $500,000 by the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award in 1991, for a book offering creative solutions to global problems. SYNOPSIS The story starts with an intelligent ape that 'talks' telepathically to a human. The ape becomes the man's teacher. The teaching takes place primarily through questions - in the Socratic tradition.
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John Bickart and Raymond Bock will give a workshop, "Recovering Your Childhood in Adulthood", which will air at Columbia University on April 1st at the "Awakened Campus Summit" on April 1st: 4:25 pm-4:55 pm EST. Both Ray and John have worked with adults and children who were depressed and exhibited destructive behaviors. They have witnessed these dysfunctions in outward expressions of cutting, escaping through drug use, criminal activity, and suicide. Spiritual practices that cause a recovery - in their experience - come from a reintegration of the childlike ability to perceive a situation as useful as opposed to simply good vs. bad.
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Soon to be published ... a book that is the compilation of the "20 Opportunities to Transform Yourself While Teaching" Workshop.
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Heart Thought
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"What is a heart thought? ...
You kind of know somewhere inside you, what you wish at any one time in your life, if you stop and think about it. " |
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